A mnemonic is a memory device for reducing something diverse and complicated to an easily -remembered pattern. For example, for the order of planets in the solar system, I learned as a boy the sentence: Men very easily make jugs, serve useful necessary purposes; to give Mercury, Venus, Earth, Ma...

Words are things people say or write As Lewis Caroll so famously wrote: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves             Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves,             And the mome raths outgrabe. Or as another English don would later pen to everlasting f...

The problem is that English uses two different kinds of adjectives to mean "first, second, etc". The ones in -ary without the -n- come from the Latin ordinals, "first, second, etc."; but they are different after 3. Primus — primary "first" Secundus — secondary "second" Tertius — tertia...